


Names Written in Smoke

by followbutterfly



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followbutterfly/pseuds/followbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles’s face lingers on Erik’s palm, longing for the familiar warmth he missed in such long time but it isn’t here. Erik responds to his touch with a sudden jolt, shocked and almost terrified. </p>
<p>“It’s okay,” Charles whispers when he feels the terror forming in Erik’s frantic mind, before moves his lips to the man’s fingers and sucks two of them as gently and slowly as Erik wanted him to do many times.</p>
<p>(post-Apocalypse a.k.a. the plot I made up after the movie. No spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Names Written in Smoke

 

Charles’s face lingers on Erik’s palm, longing for the familiar warmth he missed in such long time but it isn’t here. Erik responds to his touch with a sudden jolt, shocked and almost terrified.

“It’s okay,” Charles whispers when he feels the terror forming in Erik’s frantic mind, before moves his lips to the man’s fingers and sucks two of them gently and slowly as Erik wanted him to do many times.

What he hears from Erik is a small sob. He neither pulls back nor urges Charles with a tuck of the hand on his neck as when they were intimately closed, or when Erik was used to be _Erik_ to him.

Charles feels the fingers crooked inside and curls them with his warm tongue. It sends an electric spark lurching to Erik and Charles sees his mind shattering and _screaming_.

Suddenly Charles pushes away, embarrassed and – _humiliated_.

“I’m—no, please,” Erik’s voice is croak and dry. He looks so desperate from Charles’s eyes. “Don’t leave me.”

“I can’t,” Charles doesn’t even hear his own voice because he solely senses Erik’s mind collapsing with confusion and fear for making Charles upset. That beautiful mind Charles falls in love to. It was too bright and warming to be touched, but now is clouded with emotions besides caring and love.

Charles knows the reasons Erik wants so badly to please him. He wants to compensate with what he has hurt Charles for years -- those years that destroyed their bonding. He wants to feel connected with the only man in the world that could understand him, not by his past, but through his agony. Charles is the first person who teaches Erik not to dismiss his pain, but embraces it. Erik, through Charles’s mind, thinks he is cured by Charles’s kind hearted nature. Erik sees the goodness inside of him, as almost impossible as Frankenstein’s monster learns to love his master. But it happens, at least it had happened.  

He sees the flash of the tingling lightness in a room where both of them stood in front of the mansion, their shadows crossing the balcony. Two figures had been so close enough that caused their shadows to collide. It is the indistinct picture of them, kissing under the balcony for the first time. It is peculiar, since it has different angle and light shading from Erik’s eyes.

Then Charles knows. It is the reflection on the metal back door, which projected their shadows on the surface, and Erik sees them on there.

It’s the first time Erik has been kissed. He’s too stubborn --too shy to witness the man he feels for learning to kiss him right with his own eyes. Instead, he looked away, but couldn’t help seeing it from the reflection of something nearby.

Charles’s Erik has been like that. He is aggressive, yet passionate. Childish but preserved, stubborn but soft at heart.

Charles’s chest aches for the memories and slowly withdraws his telepathy from Erik, who looks more broken.

He collects himself, “you should sleep. It will be better soon.”

“No, it won’t --you know too damn well it won’t.” Erik cries out, “I will not be recovered.”

“But doing this isn’t going to help!”

Charles pushes his wheelchair toward the door, ready to leave when he hears a heavy thud after that. He turns around and sees Erik kneels down on the floor, tears streaming from both cheeks.

“Please,” he says, “I need to remember.”

There isn’t one person crying in the room.

“No, you just want to take back what you had. It’s always your selfishness to claim anything once belonged to you. But I don’t want to be a thing you’ve lost. I tried to be one, Erik. I _wanted_ to. And you should see what I saw in your head. You’re not the person I’ve known and I’m so—so sorry for you, my friend.”

It’s the long and hurtful speech Charles says and pretends to feel every word of it. He leaves the man behind without looking back and closes the door.

He sees Raven waiting in the corridor. She looks older and tired. Charles slightly shakes his head and gives her a sad smile.

He can hear Raven asking him; _how is he going to live after all this?_ However, she learns not to say something that isn’t good for any cost. With less hot tempered, she is at least more calm with so many losses than her young age, but still not close to be broken.

Instead, she says in a low voice, “how is it?”

“He’s going to be okay,” So is Charles who learns that no matter what he lies, Raven can see the truth, even though it is the painful one.

Her face is distorted but she doesn’t say anything. Charles excuses himself and pushes his wheelchair to the gateway, where the young mutants expect him to show up for the class. He fixes himself by rubbing the reddened eyes, ready to face the world.

People said a man has lost something, but gains something in return. But Life is, and always a little irony, is it not?

Erik has been missing from Charles, but finally returns, even all of his memories are wiped out by Apocalypse. It’s a severe punishment. Despite hatred he has for Magneto, the man Erik chooses to be, Charles is the only one who can still see what is inside his head; good, bad and rotten ones but useless to bring back anything from the man he loves and wants to love again.

Deep down in the broken heart, Charles thinks he deserves the silence from the mind that has been disturbing him for decades since he rescued it from under the water.

He will, lastly, resign. Erik’s mind should be left behind to find its own peace, so as Charles’s.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Adele's songs and Pablo Naruda's poems (which I wanted to quote some lines but decided against it), this fic is written to make myself cry.


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